


yet to come

by sangi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-23
Updated: 2008-06-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangi/pseuds/sangi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time the ship has docked in the Fire Nation harbor, the faded memories are already again fresh in the front of her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	yet to come

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2008, posted again here for archival reasons.

By the time the ship has docked in the Fire Nation harbor, the faded memories are already again fresh in the front of her mind. The humid air is sticky and Katara pushes farther into the rail of the bow, distantly feeling the push and pull of the ocean beneath her.

Sokka, watching silently from many feet away, sighs and moves resolutely towards his sister. He lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen the Fire Nation,” he murmurs to her.

The waterbender smiles and laughs lightly, absently shrugging off the hand he has placed. “Years,” she says, a soft smile present on her face, though her eyes are clearly far, far away.

“Longer than that,” Sokka retorts (he can understand the ominous feeling digging deep into her gut). “An eternity.”

The ship’s captain comes over after a long moment. “We’ve arrived,” he says, looking carefully between the two.

(Katara’s eyes are pained, and -)

“I’ll go get Toph,” she says, and hurries away, down below where the earthbender is probably trying not to be seasick.

The water tribe boy sees the captain’s inquiring look and shrugs. “We’ve been here before,” he explains, and that is enough.

 

* * *

 

  
There is no banquet in honor of their arrival. That is good, Katara thinks, because I don’t think I could handle one. It is a slight surprise, however, when she goes to where she remembers (remembers with a dark intensity she would like to keep inside) the throne room to be and – and there is nothing there.

She frowns, placing a hand against the wall where two brave doors used to stand, large and looming. There is nothing there.

“I moved it,” she hears a low, soft voice say from behind her. The girl’s eyes are wide and deliciously blue as she slowly turns around, and the man almost wonders if she will be afraid of what she might see.

It’s exactly what she expected. Zuko…

Katara and Zuko haven’t seen each other for so long that they’re practically strangers now, just more victims of a raging war that devoured, devoured, and never stopped.

“The throne room was horrible,” he says now, seriously, uncharacteristically leaning against the wall, still facing her. His golden eyes are locked dangerously onto hers. “I couldn’t bear it, not after…” his voice trails off, and he shrugs reminiscently.

Katara smiles; a tentative smile that offers something more than the obvious. “I don’t think that I could’ve handled it either,” she says, and laughs lightly.

Zuko’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly – there is blood on the ground, redred blood – and then he shrugs again. Katara wonders, muses, almost distantly, that Zuko is a lot more reserved now. He’s a lot more easygoing.

He smirks, as if he can read her thoughts, and offers her a hand as he moves away from the wall and towards her. “Let me lead you to the new throne room.”

The waterbender wonders if this new throne room will be anything like the new Zuko.  


* * *

 

“So I guess you couldn’t take it, huh?” Katara asks, leaning indelicately against a balcony. The man in front of her turns around, the lines of agitation on his face slowly disappearing into smoothness. Zuko smiles lightly at the waterbender before leaning over the balcony himself, watching the sun set.

“Those officials,” he rejoinders, “are ridiculously full of themselves. Speaking of the war as if they had been in the fray, risking their lives for the same ideas that they once outwardly resented.”

Katara snorts and then laughs lightly. “But of course they can’t understand. War is one of those ‘you have to be there to get it’ inside jokes,” she says, almost casually, but he can detect the caustic undertone to her voice.

Zuko puts more of his weight on one arm and leans on it to look over at her. Her blue eyes slid over slowly to meet his squarely. “I take it you’ve dealt with people like that, then.”

The younger girl shrugs. “You mean people who want to take Aang’s name and make it into something that it isn’t? Make his death a holiday? Over-glorify war?” Katara closes her eyes wearily. “Yeah.”

“The new Avatar should be closing in on eight now,” he says after a long minute.

“Yeah,” she says. “Soon the child will be found.” Katara remembers, distinctly, and not for the first time, that Aang will live on through the elements.

* * *

 

She shows up at the door of his chambers in the middle of the night, a goddess in the shady moonlight coming through the slatted wooden windows. Before her hand has even lifted to knock – or open the door by force, he isn’t sure – Zuko is out of his bed and opening the door. Katara is standing there, dressed only in a white nightgown trimmed with red that glows dangerously in the night.

“I hate you,” she says quickly, dark eyes burning intensely into his with some emotion between regret and greif that he can’t distinguish. “I can never forgive you,” she says - the words aren’t angry, but almost remorseful, “for what happened.”

“Hm,” he merely observes as she pushes her way closer to him.

The blue of her eyes clashes with the red of her nightgown and he longs to just take it off of her, but she continues to talk. “I hate you because you didn’t save him, because you couldn’t save him. I hate myself, but I hate you more, because you promised me you wouldn’t let him get hurt. You wouldn’t let him die.”

The man’s eyes close and open slowly, allowing gold-amber depths to stare right into her. “There are other ways we can take out our anger,” he says impishly, the level of tension dropping drastically.

Katara’s face automatically softens as she punches him lightly on the shoulder. “You’re a pervert,” she scolds.

He leans away from the doorway a bit as he pulls away from the door and lets her in. “Yeah,” Zuko murmurs as he pulls her in for dark kiss, closing the door behind them, “I know.”

* * *

 

“You and Sparky, huh?” Toph asks one day, watching Sokka and Zuko spar in hand-to-hand combat not too far away. The earthbender sets her tea back down on the small table in front of them, leaning farther back into the grass.

“Yeah?” Katara retorts quietly, watching the sweat drip down from his body onto the grass, “What about it?”

Toph shrugs, bare feet shuffling gently in the earth. “Nothing. It was just sort of unexpected, you know. With the history between you two.”

“It was sort of unexpected. And unplanned. And completely inconvenient,” Katara says, eyes still watching the two men, “but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

* * *

 

He wakes up to find Katara standing on his balcony, already dressed, staring down at the courtyards and people below. He moves to stand behind her, arms reaching around her waist to pull the waterbender to him gently.

“How do you deal with it?” she asks him as he hugs her back close to his body.

Zuko smiles down at her, letting his chin rest upon her head, and whispers, “I try to think of the future, not the past.”

 


End file.
